observations, comments, findings—factual and fictional— beliefs, and thoughts about the world and its creatures started and maintained as a way to keep amuse and possibly edify the world's pilgrims on their journey to we know not where

Monday, January 30, 2006

That Messy Business--Democracy

To the surprise of nearly every Western pundit, it seems, with the exception of Juan Cole and a few others who actually watch, listen, and learn, Hamas cleaned up in the Palestinian parliamentary election. The U.S. alone threw millions of dollars into the campaign to shore up the corrupt Fatah regime--how much of that went to the election rather than numbered accounts in safe foreign banks--and now says it won't give aid to or deal with a "terrorist organization sworn to the destruction of Israel." The New York Times has the basics. Someone better talk to the new Palestinian government; it represents the will of the people--a prime example of the democracy the Bushbucker wants to impose on the world. It also is clearly a referendum on the corrupt Fatah leadership, the murderous Bushbucker conquest of Iraq and its support for Fatah (kiss of death), and of Israel. That should only surprise people who don't live in reality based world. It's pretty fundamental: you dispossess, brutalize, kill, and oppress people, treat them like subhumans, and they will hate you and swear to kill you.

Along those lines, since the Bushbuckers claim to be great at fighting terrorism--after 9/11--I went back and read the report of the 9/11 Commission on that August 6, 2001, briefing, the history lesson entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US." It's excerpted on pages 261 and 262 of the .pdf file, in a chapter called "The System Was Blinking Red." The only way to read this material is that the security and intelligence apparatus knew something was coming down, and they knew it could be here, although they expected it to be abroad. They told the Bushbucker, not just to brief him but also because the President has to steer all the departments. By the Bushbucker's own self-serving account he thought it "heartening that 70 active investigations were under way." (260) If his advisers had gone on to tell him that "there was a cell in the United States, he would have moved to take care of it. That never happened." (260)

This account makes no sense on its face. In the straightforward-just-the-facts narrrative of the commission, it makes less sense. It was clear something big was coming down here or abroad. Heightened vigilance was required, but the Bushbucker who knew little and understood less did nothing. It's not that this August 6 briefing existed without context--there was doubtless much richer context than we know--it's that the Bushbucker exists without context or perspective--he is, after all always erasing his past, like an ersatz existentialist. You end up with "bushbucking," seen again with Katrina--responsibility ducking blame shifting.

There was no forestalling Katrina, of course, and there doubtless was no stopping what happened on 9/11/2001--I don't believe in "what ifs.' But I do believe in learning the truth, insofar as it can be learned, and in both these cases, we are a long way from that.